There are times when we may feel emotionally or verbally attacked by a friend or family member “out of nowhere.” Or perhaps you’ve watched yourself act out in a painful, destructive way.

Why do we suddenly strike out in such ways? To put it simply, it’s because the unhappy story, which we assume is true, gets triggered. And when it does, we go into defense mode, which generally starts with blaming someone else for our pain and suffering.

For instance, we may believe that we are unlovable, therefore no one can be trusted, or that the world is dangerous and everybody is out to hurt us or take something away from us; those sort of beliefs bring on feelings of distrust, resentment, and paranoia and then we automatically act in ways that willprove our unhappy story to be true. So this means that if we go in to knee jerk reaction when our friend or loved one is triggered and jumps down our throat, and we react defensively, we actually only help them prove their own unhappy story to be true, which then gives them justification (at least in their mind) to retaliate. The war is on!

Bottom line is that once we understand this, it allows us a conscious choice: A) We can go into full blown react, see ourselves as being at the mercy of their outrageous behavior (victim) and jump on the Victim Triangle with them, or B) We can choose to see them as our present opportunity for refinement. 😊

The challenge is to learn to be kind to both ourselves AND them.

Seek to see the story behind the reaction and use that understanding to better respond (rather than to react) from a place of self-responsibility and kindness – towards the other as well as towards yourself.

Remember it’s not a question of whether or not to tolerate abuse at the hands of another – of course we don’t set ourselves up to be someone’s whipping post, however, rather than trying to control or change the other persons behavior (good luck with that! ;)) we learn to focus instead on refining our own consciousness by learning to practice becoming the best and highest example of Reality and peace possible.

This may sound like a tall order – but really is it any harder than the misery and prolonged suffering we create for one another when we react blindly our of our unhappy stories instead?

The observer self is that neutral inner space that allows us to recognize that people tend to automatically react from their own unconscious patterns of belief, rather than because of us. This knowledge makes it possible for us to stop making their reactivity about us.

This means we can stop taking the doings and sayings (and all the reactions) of others, so personal! We do not have to make their choices, and reactions towards us, about us.

None the less many of us do personalize the behavior of others. We assume people do what they do “at” or “to” us, and that’s where the trouble begins.

Rather than observing that people are miserable because they believe their own unhappy thoughts about themselves, and the world, we, like them, tend to blame external factors, outside situations, and other people, for the misery we feel, and that we witness in them. This search for an external cause makes it easy to fall prey to a “witch hunt” (victim) mentality in an effort to find who or what is to blame for the misery we see and experience.

The simple truth is that as long as we think there is an external cause for our own (and their) misery, we will have no choice BUT to go on seeking something/someone else to blame for the unhappiness we see.

The blame game is one of finding external causes for pain, rather than to understand that all misery originates in the mind of the one who is miserable. Always. No exceptions. Yes, sad, traumatic, painful things happen in life, to all of us. But even our emotional responses to things such as these are created by what we tell ourselves about them, and not the events in and of themselves.

This need to find something outside ourselves to blame is a primary characteristic of victim consciousness. Taking personal responsibility is equated with self-blame when we are operating in victim consciousness, and that HURTS too much! So for most of us in victim consciousness, it is far more preferable to blame someone else for our pain than to experience the debilitating pain and self-degradation that blaming ourself causes! And who can blame us?

Blaming is what those of us caught up in victim consciousness do. This is because no one ever taught us that it is our thinking and not outside events that cause our pain. Therefore when we are unhappy, we look for something “out there” to blame for it. Blaming others becomes a way to protect ourselves from being blamed: blaming outside people and events becomes our default setting for self-preservation.

But there is another alternative besides the “blame game.”

Our perception and response to life changes dramatically when we learn to look for the underlying belief pattern that is the true culprit that causes our unhappiness.

Rather than to engage in a victim strategy that requires us to defend our innocence by, in turn, blaming others, we can instead learn to sidestep the accusations others hurl our way in their attempts to protect themselves, and, like an Aikido master who skillfully steps aside, we learn to allow the negative energy force of blame to go by us observed, but unheeded. This side-stepping motion allows us to step aside into an observer space, to remain calm and detached (rather than to personalize the attack), and so allows something totally new and more positive to transpire instead.

But what literally brought me to my knees that evening in the garden that I have been speaking to you about in the last several posts was the realization of how it is I treat others when I am engaged in the self-destructive cycle of trying to make me different, i.e. “right for God!”

I saw how I speak and treat others when I’m caught up in the downward spiraling dynamic of demanding, remaking and berating myself for not being what I think I should be to deserve the benevolences of Source. My knees buckled and gave way when I saw how I demand, blame and attempt to control others when I am out of harmony with myself.

What I saw is that the pain created in me by my refusal to accept myself as I am becomes so unbearable that sooner or later I must escape it. The way I escape that terrible self-annihilation is by turning my judgments of failure to someone else and focus on their short-comings.

In other words, the way I get relief from the way I beat myself up for not living up to my idealized image is by projecting my negative judgments against myself onto someone else – usually someone close to me, like my husband, for instance. (Ain’t he the lucky fella?! :))

Here’s what I saw myself doing:

In order to help me feel better about my own failure to attain perfection, I start picking someone else apart. I move from the “I should be different” dictum to one that says, “HE (they, she) should be different!”

In other words, I unconsciously invite someone from my life to participate with me on the victim triangle by persecuting them (sometimes only in my mind and other times out loud) for not being the way I think THEY should be. I transfer my image of self-perfection to the other person and start demanding that they be what I’ve failed to make myself into being.

I then try to change them by trying to fix, control, or manipulate them: for instance, with my husband, I might offer helpful suggestions, all in the spirit of being for his highest good, taking it for granted that I know how he should be, of course. I spot in him the changes I secretly think I need to make and then try to get him to make those same changes in himself. (No wonder Byron Katie reminds us that the advice we give others is really for us!)

In other words, I try to make him fit the mold I am failing to shape myself into becoming!This effort to change him is me in the role of rescuer on the triangle. He has now become my victim, my “fixer-upper,” my own personal “pet-project.”

Of course sooner or later those we project our judgments to are bound to feel like we are trying to control them and they end up feeling mistreated, disapproved of, etc. Sooner or later they will start resisting our efforts to make them into something different and balk and then round the triangle we go together, ad nauseum.

So I realized that not only do I try to bully myself into becoming some mind-conceived and impossible ideal but I also simultaneously try to bully those around me into becoming what they are not either! What an exercise in futility! And what but misery can come from such efforts?

I became aware that I was lying on the ground on my garden path now with my cheek to the earth in a posture of surrender to these dawning realizations and in my mind on tha evening I heard thoughts that,transcribed into words, went something like this:

(speaking to me) “Your job is not to change yourself (or anybody else for that matter) into fitting this concept you’ve dreamed up of who you (and they) should be. I am the One who created you as you are and I am THAT which prompts your movement, not you.

Should you choose to line up with Me then yours can be a path of joy, of minimal resistance, of acceptance (of yourself and others), of grace. But if you fight my design for your life you will generate resistance that can only result in misery for you and for those around you.

There were other thoughts too that came to me that evening on my garden path regarding the reality of who we are … I will share them next in one final post on my revelations in the garden. Stay tuned.